In London, Fashion History Up Close

Wednesday

Jan 29, 2014 at 12:01 AMJan 29, 2014 at 9:45 PM

c.2014 New York Times News Service

c.2014 New York Times News Service

For those who were shut out of the blockbuster “Savage Beauty” show at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2011 or, because of the crowds, could not get close enough to the Alexander McQueen clothes to actually see them, a trip to London may be in order.

Through March 2, an exhibition at Somerset House called “Isabella Blow: Fashion Galore!” featuring the extraordinary fashion collection of Blow, who committed suicide in 2007, pays homage to the woman who discovered and championed McQueen, who himself was a suicide in 2010. The show is like a chamber music version of the Met’s symphony — smaller, quieter, more accessible — but still displaying the full range of McQueen’s impressive talents.

Blow’s interest in McQueen started early. According to the show’s display text, she saw his graduate show at Central St. Martins college in 1992 (“Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims”) and decided to buy every piece, paying him 100 pounds a week until her bill was settled. Later, as a fashion editor and stylist, she helped build his international reputation.

Included in the show are mesmerizing pieces from the designer’s “Dante” collection in 1996 — deconstructed lace dresses, a gold-embroidered military frock coat, a lavender corseted jacket — as well as designs from his controversial “Highland Rape” collection in 1995 and the 2008 “La Dame Bleue” show that McQueen dedicated to Blow after her death.

You can actually get close enough to touch the clothes (the material practically begs to be fingered), though there are signs everywhere warning you against doing any such thing.

And the crowds? There are none. On a recent Friday afternoon, there were no more than a dozen people in any of the exhibition rooms at any one time, while in the hallway upstairs people were in line for around an hour to see the show devoted to British painter Stanley Spencer.

Just as intriguing as the clothes on display are two films that show McQueen’s runway collections: the tribute show to Blow in Paris in 2008 and, in particular, the 1996 show at Christchurch Spitalfields in London that marked McQueen’s arrival as an international star.

“Mr. McQueen,” wrote Amy Spindler, the fashion critic for The New York Times at the time, “brought the excitement, edge and theatrics he is known for but added a wonderful fourth element for the first time: maturity.” As you watch the video, mesmerized, the room packed with spectators, half of them seemingly on a day pass from their high school, you notice a jarring difference from the runway shows of today.

It is not just that the models seem to be enjoying themselves. There are no celebrities in the front row, nor people holding their cellphones aloft to take pictures of the models as they pass — just fashion editors madly scribbling away, and looking as if they are witnessing history.